Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 5 eBook

But this I might have spared. Of this, devil
as thou art, thou canst not be capable. Thou
couldst not enjoy a triumph so disgraceful to thy
wicked pride, as well as to humanity.

Shouldest thou think, that the melancholy spectacle
hourly before me has made me more serious than usual,
perhaps thou wilt not be mistaken. But nothing
more is to be inferred from hence (were I even to return
to my former courses) but that whenever the time of
cool reflection comes, whether brought on by our own
disasters, or by those of others, we shall undoubtedly,
if capable of thought, and if we have time for it,
think in the same manner.

We neither of us are such fools as to disbelieve a
futurity, or to think, whatever be our practice, that
we came hither by chance, and for no end but to do
all the mischief we have it in our power to do.
Nor am I ashamed to own, that in the prayers which
my poor uncle makes me read to him, in the absence
of a very good clergyman who regularly attends him,
I do not forget to put in a word or two for myself.

If, Lovelace, thou laughest at me, thy ridicule will
be more conformable to thy actions than to thy belief.—­Devils
believe and tremble. Canst thou be more abandoned
than they?

And here let me add, with regard to my poor old man,
that I often wish thee present but for one half hour
in a day, to see the dregs of a gay life running off
in the most excruciating tortures that the cholic,
the stone, and the surgeon’s knife can unitedly
inflict, and to hear him bewail the dissoluteness
of his past life, in the bitterest anguish of a spirit
every hour expecting to be called to its last account.—­Yet,
by all his confessions, he has not to accuse himself,
in sixty-seven years of life, of half the very vile
enormities which you and I have committed in the last
seven only.

I conclude with recommending to your serious consideration
all I have written, as proceeding from the heart and
soul of

Your assured friend,JohnBelford

LETTER XIV

Mr. Lovelace, toJohnBelford,
Esq. Tuesdayafternoon, June 6.

Difficulties still to be got over in procuring this
plaguy license. I ever hated, and ever shall
hate, these spiritual lawyers, and their court.

And now, Jack, if I have not secured victory, I have
a retreat.

But hold—­thy servant with a letter—­

***

A confounded long one, though not a narrative one—­Once
more in behalf of this lady?—­Lie thee down,
oddity! What canst thou write that can have
force upon me at this crisis?—­And have I
not, as I went along, made thee to say all that was
necessary for thee to say?

***

Yet once more I will take thee up.

Trite, stale, poor, (sayest thou,) are some of my
contrivances; that of the widow particularly!—­I
have no patience with thee. Had not that contrivance
its effect at that time, for a procrastination? and
had I not then reason to fear, that the lady would
find enough to make her dislike this house? and was
it not right (intending what I intended) to lead her
on from time to time with a notion that a house of
her own would be ready for her soon, in order to induce
her to continue here till it was?